By popular demand, AsGamer is ready to start a new series dedicated to developing a flash game from the ground up. We’re talking everything: the preloader, the menus, the game, game over, highscore, all that.  Now of course, we may take advantage of some already developed systems. For example, we’ll probably use MochiAds LeaderBoard to setup our highscores. However, by the time this series is complete you’ll be able to go through all the steps to create and spread your flash game around the web.

Okay, this stop in the series is simply to figure out what we are going to develop and how we want to go about making it. So let’s figure out what we are going to make.

Part 1: What kind of game?

When I decided to do this tutorial, my first thought was we need to make a solid game, maybe not a great game, but definitely something worth playing.  I don’t want to write a 15 article series that thoroughly explains everything but gives us nothing useful in the end. But at the same time, I really don’t want to spend forever explaining how to make a detailed game like Gemcraft, Mastermind, or Sonny. So we’re going to make a sniper shooter type game.

A beautiful example of the type of game you can make with what we are going to learn in this tutorial is Mort the Sniper. Not exactly Mort the Sniper but… if you can’t make Mort the Sniper by the time we are done it won’t be because this tutorial didn’t explain it.

Part 2: Development Cycle

I’ll be bluntly honest with you. When I create a flash game, I never start out making the preloader, the menu, and the other window screens first. I usually start writing the core of the gameplay, get it relatively stable, then I move on to developing the menus. This works great but means I’ll have to backtrack in the end and change how I set things up.

The biggest thing that causes an issue is the preloader and our actionscript classes.  We’ll discuss the problems and the solutions in the first real tutorial of the series, but make sure you pay attention, because when you start developing your game you’ll need to remember how to set things up.

Part 3: A list of topics will discuss

Here’s the core of what this series will discuss:

• Creating a self contained single file preloader for our single file game. (This insures that we will be able to package the game and distribute it to flash portals)
• Creating a pregame sponsor roll. (Shows the sponsors and creators of the game before the game is playable)
• Creating a menu screen with 3 important links, Play Game, Credits, More Games.  (If you get your game sponsored, sponsors always want a more games link that shoots back to their website)
• Playing the game with multiple levels, game over, highscore.
• Integrating a highscore system such as MochiAd’s Leaderboard.
• And likely adding in game advertisement so you can make money off of your game.

Okay, that’s all for now. I know, nothing too exciting… yet! We’ll kick this series off very very soon. So keep an eye out for it.

Tags: ActionScript, as3, Basics, Beginners, Game Development, Standards, Tutorial

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.